The Gender Expansion Project’s mission is to promote gender-inclusive education and awareness surrounding transgender, transsexual, intersex, and gender diverse people through evidence based care, education, research, advocacy, public and private policy, and respect in transgender health and wellbeing.
Fund: U.S. Fund
Black and Pink
Black and Pink is an open family of LGBTQ prisoners and free world allies who support each other.
Black and Pink is an open family of LGBTQ prisoners and free world allies who support each other. Their work is rooted in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people, and their goal is to abolish the prison industrial complex. As a grassroots community organization, Black and Pink strives to take leadership from those most impacted by the prison industrial complex. Their monthly newspaper provides an essential outlet for communication, storytelling, power building, and solidarity for incarcerated LGBTQ individuals. This organization is supported through the Funding Queerly Giving Circle, which is housed at Astraea.
Missouri GSA Network
Missouri GSA Network’s work is to train young trans and queer leaders in Missouri as organizers, activists, healers and community builders.
Missouri GSA Network’s work is to train young trans and queer leaders in Missouri as organizers, activists, healers and community builders. Their programs center why each individual comes to liberation work for folks systematically oppressed. They then use those reasons to train young people in schools and to envision how to do liberatory work well. Missouri GSA network currently has a Youth Leadership Council made up of 19 young people from around the St Louis region which is the programming body of the organization. ‘Sisterhood’ is their program of young trans women of color organizing to love each other and fight back against the systems of transphobia, racism, sexism that exists and continues to murder these young women. They have been building relationships amongst young trans women of color through shared values over the last two years and are now busier than ever.
This organization is supported through the Funding Queerly Giving Circle, which is housed at Astraea.
BreakOUT!
Invoking the rich cultural tradition of resistance in the South, BreakOUT! builds the power of LGBTQ youth to create a safer and more just New Orleans.
Invoking the rich cultural tradition of resistance in the South, BreakOUT! builds the power of LGBTQ youth to create a safer and more just New Orleans. Youth members produced a film “We Deserve Better” to highlight their experiences with criminalization and their demands to end discriminatory policing practices. As part of their broader “We Deserve Better” campaign, BreakOUT! secured groundbreaking language in the Proposed Consent Decree between the New Orleans Police Department and the Department of Justice that is the most extensive in the country to date and specifically prohibits profiling of LGBTQ people based on gender identity and sexual orientation. BreakOUT! has also maintained correspondence with those inside the notoriously violent Orleans Parish Prison. They recently published a report, We Deserve Better: A Report on Policing in New Orleans By and For Queer and Trans Youth of Color, in order to identify and move forward needed reforms. BreakOUT! continues to fight against laws that profile and criminalize their community members, and to build nationally with allies as part of the Get Yr Rights National Network.
Check out our 2018 International Trans Day of Visibility video featuring an interview with BreakOUT’s former Executive Director, Wes Ware:
Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC)
The Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC) is an undocumented and queer/trans youth led organization that mobilizes youth, families and incarcerated people to end the criminalization of immigrants and people of color.
The Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC) is an undocumented and queer/trans youth led organization that mobilizes youth, families and incarcerated people to end the criminalization of immigrants and people of color. Through story-based strategies and grassroots organizing, IYC brings the struggles of directly impacted communities to the forefront of our movements to create social, cultural and policy change. Their programs and work build power with those directly impacted by approaching leadership development from a framework of human development which translates into their campaigns. IYC ensures that the undocumented and trans communities’ demands are included within the existing formations that are campaigning against immigration enforcement and mass incarceration. This organization is supported through the Funding Queerly Giving Circle, which is housed at Astraea.
Freedom Inc.
Freedom, Inc. (FI) challenges the fundamental root causes of violence against women, queer and trans folx, and youth through leadership development, radical service providing, and community organizing in low-income communities of color–focusing on Black and Southeast Asian communities.
Freedom, Inc. (FI) challenges the fundamental root causes of violence against women, queer and trans folx, and youth through leadership development, radical service providing, and community organizing in low-income communities of color–focusing on Black and Southeast Asian communities. FI’s anti-violence work includes working against systemic and institutional violence of poverty, sexism, racism, heterosexism, and cisgenderism as well as their interpersonal expressions of domestic and sexual violence. Their programs aim to change cultural norms into which people are socialized (addressing the root causes of violence and internalized oppression) and build capacity for survivors as leaders in their communities to organize for institutional change and accountability.
El/La Para Translatinas
El/La works to build a world where transgender Latinas (translatinas) feel they deserve to protect, love and develop themselves.
El/La works to build a world where transgender Latinas (translatinas) feel they deserve to protect, love and develop themselves. By building this base, they support translatinas in protecting themselves against violence, abuse, and illness, and in fully realizing their dreams. El/La is an organization for translatinas that builds collective vision and action to promote their survival and improve their quality of life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their scope of work includes: (1) HIV Prevention – outreach, education, testing, peer-to-peer counseling, accompaniment, and referrals and accompaniment; (2) Violence Prevention – case management, referrals and accompaniment, and Luchadoras Leadership Development and Translatina Council/Consejo Translatina; and (3) Safe Space and Community – evening drop-in, family-style celebrations, social networking, expression of spirituality, and life skills groups. As a result of these programs they in turn go out and educate community members about risks to their health and safety, support each other in identifying barriers to full participation in society, and find resources to overcome those barriers. El/La builds visibility and alliances to respond to transphobic attacks and has worked with over 105 city agencies, service providers, programs and collaboratives in San Francisco, the greater Bay Area and beyond. Their work strengthens translatinas’ ability to critique and respond to the systems of violence they face, and the continuation of anti-violence programs addressing violence against translatinas.
Streetwise and Safe (SAS)
Streetwise and Safe: LGBTQQ Youth of Color Standing Up to Police Abuse and Criminalization (SAS) is a collaborative multi-strategy initiative to develop leadership, knowledge, and skills among LGBTQQ youth of color who have experienced gender-and-sexuality-specific forms of race and class based policing, particularly in the context “quality of life” policing and the policing of sex work and trafficking in persons.
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Streetwise and Safe: LGBTQQ Youth of Color Standing Up to Police Abuse and Criminalization (SAS) is a collaborative multi-strategy initiative to develop leadership, knowledge, and skills among LGBTQQ youth of color who have experienced gender-and-sexuality-specific forms of race and class based policing, particularly in the context “quality of life” policing and the policing of sex work and trafficking in persons. SAS has been very active in the Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) campaign, and is the only LGBTQ youth of color organization part of CPR’s steering committee. Their critical participation highlights the ways in which “Stop and Frisk” practices not only affect black and brown men, but LGBTQI youth of color in particular. SAS, along other NY-based grantee partners, contributed to the passing of the Community Safety Act. More recently, they pushed the passing of a partial “No Condoms as Evidence” policy and are now part of the decision making table evaluating policy implementation. SAS and BreakOUT! are leading the Get Yr Rights National Network.
Survivors Organizing for Liberation (SOL)
Survivors Organizing for Liberation (SOL) and Buried Seedz of Resistance envisions a Colorado where Transgender, Gender non-conforming, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Queer people have the power to determine the conditions of their lives, are valued for who they are, take responsibility for each other’s safety, and live their lives free from violence.
Survivors Organizing for Liberation (SOL) and Buried Seedz of Resistance envisions a Colorado where Transgender, Gender non-conforming, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Queer people have the power to determine the conditions of their lives, are valued for who they are, take responsibility for each other’s safety, and live their lives free from violence. SOL|BSeedz operates a 24-hour statewide hotline for community members who have experienced or witnessed violence as a strategy to empower callers to join the “healing collective” and become active members of bringing safety and wellness into our communities. SOL|BSeedz has been actively responding to the murder of Jessie Hernandez, a young queer Latina murdered by the Denver Police Department, and works with community members to respond to ongoing police violence.
Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project
TGIJP was founded in 2004 with the mission to challenge and end human rights abuses against transgender, gender variant and intersex people, especially transgender women, in California prisons and beyond.
TGIJP was founded in 2004 with the mission to challenge and end human rights abuses against transgender, gender variant and intersex people, especially transgender women, in California prisons and beyond. While TGIJP has done some legal work for intersex individuals caught within the prison industrial complex, its leadership team has long wanted to expand its work in this area to fully realize its name and mission. In 2014, an intersex individual joined the TGIJP’s core volunteer team. TGIJP is now working to increase the visibility of intersex issues in their current programming (e.g. publishing information in their newsletter and raising intersex issues with current allies); conducting internal education for staff, core leadership and members; developing collaborative relationships with intersex organizations; and conducting outreach to identify imprisoned intersex people, share information and support their ability to self-advocate and self-organize. Check out our 2018 International Trans Day of Visibility video featuring an interview with TGIJP’s former Executive Director, Miss Major: Learn more about the documentary 2015 Global Arts Fund grantee partner Annalise Ophelian made about Miss Major:
